A Narrative Example of How We Experience amidst a Technical Milieu

Imagine making your way to work at a large city office building. After parking your car, you traverse a few city blocks amidst the bustle of morning rush – groups of pedestrians, the smell of exhaust, and the cacophony of horns, motors and building ventilation systems surrounding you seem almost overstimulating to your senses. You feel anxious, attending to every environmental modulation to ensure that you are not accosted by some vital threat, like the passing motorist who ran a red light in haste. As you approach the door to your office high-rise, a woman is just ahead of you looking at her smartphone and wearing earbuds. Engrossed in the

extension of her nervous system, via the bodily incorporation of her smartphone, she is unaware

of the presence of others and does not hold the door for the lobby worker carrying a large box. You rush to assist the person with the box, and then enter the building to join the small crowd waiting for the elevator. There is the woman who did not hold the door, along with two other women also engaged with their phones and earbuds. As the elevator arrives, you and the three women with their phones begin to enter the lift car. The logistics of this movement are a bit awkward. Two of the women attempt to board the car while others are still exiting. The third woman does not even seem aware that the elevator has arrived. You wait for the remaining passengers to exit and assume your space in the lift. Suddenly, you hear “hold the door!” coming

from the lobby. Standing near the panel, you press the door open button and another passenger enters – a woman holding a cup of coffee in one hand and a briefcase in the other. She looks to you, smiles and says, “thank you.”

Traveling upward in the lift, you look at the three young women with their phones. You can hear fragmented blips of tin and bass emanating from the mash-up of music coursing through their headphones, and you notice something vacuous about each of their gazes, illuminated by the reflection of screens in their eyes. Quite unaware of your comportment at this particular moment, you are startled when you hear the woman with the coffee and briefcase say, “I think maybe you and I are thinking the same thing right now.” Blushing, you turn your eyes toward her and smile, as she continues “my son is like that … always has his phone in his face.”

Anxiously surprised at her ability to notice what you were thinking, you reply, “Oh my, yes! I have a smartphone too, but I just can’t use it like that, I’d walk into walls or get run over by a bus if I tried to plug-in while making my way to work.” The three other women do not even seem to notice that you and your new acquaintance are conversing, let alone that they are amidst others in the elevator. The woman with the coffee laughs in response, “me too,” she says. “I just get worried that something like that will happen to people who are always in their phones … I mean, that one lady broke her neck because she tripped into a fountain at the mall while she was texting,” she continues. “With my son, I try to tell him all the stuff he misses when he’s in his phone. I’m like, go take a walk! Look people in the eye! Smile! Engage! And, he just rolls his eyes at me. I don’t know, maybe I’m just getting old, but there’s something about looking at people and things without a phone in the way that I don’t ever want to give up,” she asserts.

As the elevator approaches your floor, you affirm her perspective with a smile and say, “Yes! I know what you mean!” A bit hurried, you continue, “Oh, this is my floor, I have to run

but I wish I didn’t. It was so nice talking with you this morning. Hope you have a great day and I hope to run into you again sometime.” The woman with the briefcase says, “Absolutely! I’m up on the 54th floor! Maybe we can grab a coffee sometime.” As you exit the door she continues, “Take care! And, have a great day yourself!”

Departing, you reflect about your conversation. Blind to how easily read your gestures are, you consider how surprised you were when she noticed your non-verbal cues in the elevator. This prompts you to realize that your interaction with the woman holding the coffee and

briefcase was unsettling and energizing, simultaneously, as people rarely look at or speak to you on your way to work. Most others are engrossed in some sort of electronic device, or a

newspaper, or a magazine, and do not seem to notice and acknowledge the presence of you or others. Your interaction with the woman made visible to you elements of your habitual, daily engagement between self, other and world, previously invisible to your awareness.

As you both resisted technical incorporation-extension of smartphones, and situated yourselves via relating, you were able to perceive and communicate about the significance of the other women’s detachment from the immediate context at hand. In other words, your perceptive

incarnation self-mediated the presence-absence synopses to permit for true perception, i.e., the dynamic resonant interplay between figure and ground, of the smartphone environment effects

for the young women. Additionally, the intervals between self-other and private-public resonate between you and the woman with the coffee, permitting communicative mediation, encouraging of authentic significance. The experience of the women with their phones differs, however, due to the implications of electronic media for contextual dimensions.